Tuesday, November 23, 2010

ATLANTA — Despite tough talk on the Internet, there was little if any indication of a passenger revolt at many major U.S. airports, with very few people declining the X-ray scan that can peer through their clothes. Those who refuse the machines are subject to a pat-down search that includes the crotch and chest.

Many travelers said that the scans and the pat-down were not much of an inconvenience, and that the stepped-up measures made them feel safer and were, in any case, unavoidable.

"Whatever keeps the country safe, I just don't have a problem with," Leah Martin, 50, of Houston, said as she waited Monday to go through security at the Atlanta airport.

At New York's LaGuardia Airport early Tuesday, Jeannine St. Amand got a pat-down in front of her husband and two children. The 45-year-old from Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada, figured she got one because the underwire of her bra tripped the metal detector.

"It's hard to remember all the restrictions. Next time, I'll wear a different bra," she said.

She opted to have the pat-down in public rather than private and said it was professional and done by a female agent.

"She tells you ahead of time what she is going to do, which is a good thing because that could be awkward," St. Amand said.

Transportation Security Administration chief John Pistole pleaded with Thanksgiving travelers for understanding and urged them not to boycott full-body scans on Wednesday. It would only snarl what is already one of the busiest, most stressful flying days of the and would only "tie up people who want to go home and see their loved ones," he said.

"We all wish we lived in a world where security procedures at airports weren't necessary," he said, "but that just isn't the case."

He noted the alleged attempt by a Nigerian with explosives in his underwear to bring down a plane over Detroit last Christmas.

6 comments:

Commerce is a government franchise, and as such is regulated how ever the owners of the franchise say it is.So it is with commercial airlines, where freight, even 'precious human cargo', falls under the rules and regulation of the franchise principal. .And what of this principal? To evade this, one must find a private, and not public means of travel. Private airplanes, and private airports. The trick is to find private means that is affordable.Let the masses have their police state, where folks like Leah Martin can enjoy their perception of safety.The mechinization of society is unbounded, andis unlikely to roll back to those halcyon daysof the past. The machine will chug along longafter my bones have turned to dust. In the meantime, though, I (and others) will stand clear of the cobbled works of this diobolicalmachine as best we can, and let the willing fallinto this scientific meat grinder.Free will is harsh, but equitable.mark me as Harry Tuttle

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